Breathe

There's days where I think the world is all sunshine and roses; the kind where a walk in the pouring rain can't convince me things aren't bright and bubbly. There's days where I'm sure something bad is going to happen, or at least, that nothing good will. They're crushing days, but I've seen some rough ones over the years.

Then there's days like today.

I'm exhausted - seriously so, but it isn't just that weariness. I feel numb.

It's something that comes and goes with me, but I can't help but see the futility of what I do. I can paddle up or down, but I'll never change the course of the river I'm floating on. If I'm confident or scattered, it doesn't seem to make a difference. If I try or don't, I always end up somewhere in between, as though any choice is just an illusion. It doesn't help being right so often, though it'd be nice if it was about the good things too.

If I feel like something bad's going to happen, I invariably fall flat on my face. If I'm sure that things might be different, that maybe things might start going my way because I'm feeling particularly optimistic that day... I fall flat on my face. The only time I'm ever right about good things, is when I change my mind later and learn in hindsight that I was actually on to something. Sometimes I'll feel like I ought to do something, like it's predestined for me to try, and I'll choose not to - I'll purposely self-sabotage, because sometimes I can't stand the futility of it. At those times, I'll have a cold feeling wash over me, lying somewhere beneath my skin. It's like standing in front of an open freezer, yet when I touch my skin, it isn't cold at all.

That feeling of wrongness is there with me today. Maybe because I'm writing this. Maybe just getting out of bed this morning was the wrong thing to do.

Usually when I get this feeling, I panic. I scramble together to do the things it feels I'm supposed to, trying to catch up to the destiny of a minute ago. Ordinarily I would, but I'm so mentally exhausted.

A lot of it is surely the pressure I'm putting on myself. I need to make changes, but due to my situation it feels like my buffer for mistakes is non-existent. If I make a wrong choice now, there could be no coming back from it. Given time I'm sure I can make the changes I need, but it feels like there's a huge lack of it... time... also. Please cross your fingers on my behalf.

There's Never a Now

Time is like a river. Pshshshshshsh. Noisy! Well no, you can't hear it. I mean sometimes people might say time whooshed by, but they are lying. It might feel like it's passing you by so quickly that you imagine there's some huge gust of wind and your brain says "Wow, time's totally flying by right now." but it's SILENT. Even now it's flowing like a really super quiet river, running away from you with every tick of the clock. No, it's totally not the same thing.

Alright, so, sometimes I think a lot of nonsense. Bear with me though!

No, tapping your foot waiting for me to get to the point isn't the same thing as time making sound - it's YOU being impatient! Also, deluded to think I'll always have a point. Or ever?

So, it's like this. Time is like a river. If you drop a little splotchy of neon-pink dye into it, you're probably better off not drinking from the river and it's completely for the best if we instead settle on a hypothetical river instead of an actual one since this didn't go down too well with my 'Time is the Gulf of Mexico' analogy that I've since removed. So hypothetical river, splotchy pink, and pshshshsh (okay, so hypothetical time river makes a sound since I have no pictures to indicate the flow of water in this case). And then the dye moves along a current, and then it's gone. At any point, you could try to scoop up some dye, but you'll never really capture it.

The dye is you. Yes, you're bright pink, but you're confident in who you are and you really don't care what people say, because you're your own person DAMNIT! It hurts of course, but why should you change who you are? JUST LET ME BE ME!!!

Right... um.. where was I?

I had a novel/script/story/poem/blog idea once about a time-travelling fool that attempted to recapture a lost past by trying to relive a beautiful moment, prolonging it. I may have also had a dream to this effect, and it's entirely possible that I invented time-travel and completely messed with the flow of time and left my life in a disorganised mess from what it was meant to be.

It's also possible I didn't, in which case I probably should invent time-travel because hey, why not, right?

Anyway, something occurred to me earlier this week: There's never a now. Even as I type this, the words were created before I see them, even if just infinitesimally 'ago'. Yeah, this is already old news. For you reader(s) (please be s's!) that are reading it, the next sentence is the future, whereas these words are the past.

Also, I was very tempted to not have a next sentence to demonstrate the tenuous nature of the future's knowability (hush, it should be a word). Or to be a jerk. One of the two. OR two of them.

Please don't tamper with our chronological river. Keep our space-time continuum free of pollutants.

~T